"An attentive Ear, a watchful Eye, and a Calm judicious Pen": William Samuel Johnson, the Colonial Agents, and the Transformation of the British Atlantic World

By looking at Great Britain and the American colonies in conjunction with the larger British Atlantic Empire, historians can better understand the political, social, and cultural transformations that occurred when transatlantic actors met. William Samuel Johnson is an example of an "ordinary" agent who nonetheless had extensive contacts with numerous British and American thinkers. While acting on Connecticut's behalf in London between 1767 and 1771, he sent reports back to Connecticut governors Jonathan Trumbull and William Pitkin on parliamentary proceedings while corresponding with the people who traveled around the Atlantic world during this critical period-merchants, seafarers, emigrants, soldiers, missionaries, radicals and conservatives, reformers, and politicians. He is also representative of the late eighteenth-century empire writ large. Agents, who had once been a source of stability in the far-flung colonies, became a destabilizing force as confusion and conflict grew over conceptual ideas of what constituted "the empire" and who was included in it. Johnson was a sane observer in the midst of the ideological and administrative upheaval of the 1760's and 1770's. His subsequent loyalism and political obscurity during the war years was in many ways a result of his attempts to reconcile various factional interests during his tenure as an agent. Although he did his best to resolve these divisions and provide an accurate account of the powerful nationalistic forces gathering on both sides of the Atlantic on the eve of the American Revolution, the agents' collective failures as transatlantic mediators helped bring about the collapse of an imperial community. This disintegration had dramatic effects on the whole of the Atlantic world.

William Pultney, earl of bath [Material gráfico] : in the collection of Lord Northnick

Resumen: Descripción: retrato de 3/4 de William Pultney sentado y de perfil

Hortus Kewensis, or, A catalogue of the plants cultivated in the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew /by William Aiton ...

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Hortus Kewensis, or, A catalogue of the plants cultivated in the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew /by William Aiton ...

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Hortus Kewensis, or, A catalogue of the plants cultivated in the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew /by William Aiton ...

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Book receipt of John Mellen and William Bentley, 1780 June 16

This half-page slip contains receipts for two Harvard College Library books received by Harvard College Tutors John Mellen (1752-1828; Harvard AB 1770) and William Bentley (1759-1819; Harvard AB 1777).

Papers of William Merchant Richardson, 1797-1806

The collection contains a four-page handwritten poem titled "Invention" composed by graduate William Richardson for the 1797 Harvard College Commencement, and an 1806 letter of introduction written by Richardson. The rhyming poem begins, “Long had creations anthem peal been rung…” and contains classical references, and mentions scientists and philosophers including Voltaire, Franklin and Newton. The poem is accompanied by a one-page handwritten letter of introduction for lawyer Benjamin Ames (Harvard AB 1803) written by William M. Richardson to Reverend William Jenks (Harvard AB 1797). The letter is dated November 10, 1806.

Top: Res. of Orman Clark, Sec. 34, Lyndon Tp. Mich. Bottom: Res. of W.E. Wessels, Sec 18, Lyndon Tp. Mich.

Lyndon Township, Mich. residences. Inset: The Old Home. Publication information: Chicago, Ill. : Everts & Stewart, 1874.

An address delivered on the evening of December 4, 1838 : before the Young Men's Association for Mutual Improvement in Albany, as introductory to their annual course of lectures /

Cover title: Introductory address delivered before the Young Men's Association of Albany on the evening of December 4, 1838, by William B. Sprague.

William Cullen Bryant : biography and selections from his writings /

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The works of William Shakespeare,

Mode of access: Internet.

The life of William Wilberforce

Mode of access: Internet.

Memoirs of Sir William Knighton, bart., G. C. H., keeper of the privy purse during the reign of His Majesty King George the Fourth.

Mode of access: Internet.